tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post3856447549173035277..comments2015-08-01T14:48:02.421+01:00Comments on separated by a common language: take-outs and take-awayslynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-64162877172619157242015-01-13T13:11:57.538+00:002015-01-13T13:11:57.538+00:00Britain also used to have a distinction between ta...Britain also used to have a distinction between taxed food eaten in and untaxed food taken away/carried out. But then VAT (valued added tax) was imposed on take-away food. The way the law was worded, this meant that burgers, fish and chips etc were taxed but no tax was levied on items like sausage rolls and cornish pasties that were still hot, or not yet cool (&#39;ambient&#39;) or briefly reheated.<br /><br />George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) got into <b>huge</b> trouble in his first Budget when he tried to extend tax to those items. It became known as <i>the Pasty Tax</i> and the Budget was dubbed an <i>ominishambles</i>.David Crosbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-74422931974747987162015-01-13T05:15:47.946+00:002015-01-13T05:15:47.946+00:00Where I live (Midwest US) &quot;for here or to go?...Where I live (Midwest US) &quot;for here or to go?&quot; is an important distinction, as food eaten in the restaurant is taxed, whereas food taken out to eat elsewhere is not.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-11023703591601621022014-06-09T03:46:59.489+01:002014-06-09T03:46:59.489+01:00As a Canadian, &quot;take-away&quot; is virtually ...As a Canadian, &quot;take-away&quot; is virtually unheard. Take-out (never &quot;a take-out&quot;) is by far the most common, although I&#39;ve heard carry-out once in a blue moon for something like pizza as well.<br /><br />Weird divisions of usage: I would use take-out (but never carry-out) to describe any food prepared at a restaurant and eaten at my home, even if I get it delivered. However, during the actual placing of the order by phone, I would only use take-out if I wanted to retrieve it myself (though I&#39;d be more likely to say pick-up).Lauranoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-91283312993248342292012-08-25T14:19:26.560+01:002012-08-25T14:19:26.560+01:00Oh, I forgot to mention. Back in the 1980s Bobby&...Oh, I forgot to mention. Back in the 1980s Bobby&#39;s general store in Verona NY sold cold fried haddock on Fridays. It was breaded rather than battered in the British style and although the idea of cold fried fish seemed rather repellent I was as ever willing to try it, and found it delicious. Much better American fast food than I ever had from a chain.<br /><br />One further point: I don&#39;t think I ever heard any BrE speaker refer to &quot;pizza pie&quot; but I have heard the AmE Dean Martin sing:<br /><br /><i>When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that&#39;s amore</i><br /><br />This is complicated because the song&#39;s lyricist was Jack Brooks, who was an American citizen by the time he wrote it but who was born in Liverpool. On the other hand, I&#39;m sure his co-writer, the impeccably Italian-American Harry Warren, would have picked him up on it. For years I thought the phrase was &#39;piece uh pie&#39; and that or perhaps &#39;pecan pie&#39; would have fulfilled the need for both alliteration and rhyme, so if &#39;pizza pie&#39; was alien to Americans there was no need to use it.enitharmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17829757748223670291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-38948685650716087032012-08-25T13:52:43.956+01:002012-08-25T13:52:43.956+01:00The best thing about fish and chip shops and india...The best thing about fish and chip shops and indian/chinese carry-outs (standard usage here, 80 miles south of the southernmost border and another 100 miles from where significant numbers of Scots actually live) is that nobody has ever succeeded in making a national chain out of any of them, selling a standardised product. Round here blows have been exchanged over the relative merits of Andy&#39;s/York St/Bath St/Mattie&#39;s and others (apparently we have more chippies per head of population than anywhere else in the country. Ironically a free market in takeaway food thrives here where it fails in the land of McDonalds and free markets as religion! Andy&#39;s wins easily for me, not least because it&#39;s closest to the beach)<br /><br />Also, in the best chippies at least, the food is cooked to order before your eyes, and the fish that you see going into into the batter looks like a piece of fish and not an industrial fabrication of marine derivatives. Chippies with tired-looking pieces of battered fish lying in a warmer when no customers are waiting are to be avoided.<br /><br />There&#39;s a clear regional distinction: ask for fish without specifying a species in London and you&#39;ll get cod. If you want haddock or any of the other species Londoners tend to go for, like skate or rock salmon, you have to order it specially. Up here the default fish is haddock and you are unlikely to see anything else other than cod.enitharmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17829757748223670291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-39533187126266803402010-04-14T17:06:46.363+01:002010-04-14T17:06:46.363+01:00Until moving to the UK four years ago (from Washin...Until moving to the UK four years ago (from Washington state, US), I would not have been able to make sense of the plural word &#39;curries&#39;; there was one dish called &#39;chicken curry&#39; and I didn&#39;t like it. I&#39;m all better now. What about calling Chinese food &#39;curry&#39;? I have friends in Glasgow who would go for a &#39;Chinese curry&#39;, which sounds strange to me.Joel A. Shaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245999265015451845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-32921593826948522092010-04-13T14:56:20.948+01:002010-04-13T14:56:20.948+01:00In Melbourne, Australia always take-away. No matte...In Melbourne, Australia always take-away. No matter if its pizza or fish and chips or indian or anything. I&#39;ve never ever heard anybody say take-out or carry-out or anything like that!Miss Madelinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08068290301404150154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-82038361097509440262010-03-04T19:54:44.719+00:002010-03-04T19:54:44.719+00:00Ordering food at takeaways has its BrE jargon. If ...Ordering food at takeaways has its BrE jargon. If two of you each want sausage and chips, you don&#39;t ask for two sausage and chips or you&#39;ll get two sausages and some chips in a worryingly damp bag advertising a local taxi-firm. You need to ask for sausage and chips twice. I don&#39;t mean you have to go into the shop on two separate occasions and ask for sausage and chips each time. Goodness me no. You use the word &quot;twice&quot;. This doesn&#39;t work, I find, though, with central European staff who, when you ask for sausage and chips twice, ask if you mean two sausage and chips. You don&#39;t, but you give in in the interest of getting something to eat. If you&#39;re getting a takeaway from the takeaway and want to eat it in the street on the way home, you ask for it open. If you want it in paper so that the grease oozes through the old copy of the Brighton Argus into your raincoat pocket, you ask for it wrapped or wrapped up. In a rare departure from the otherwise surly traditions of British culinary customer-service, staff in chipshops will offer to put lashings of salt and/or vinegar on your takeaway, rendering it quite inedible. By law, every traditional chipshop must have a greenish glass-jar containing stagnant vinegar and curried eggs dating from the T&#39;ang dynasty. There are also mummified BrE gherkins/AmE pickles which arrived in England under Roosevelt&#39;s lend-lease program(me). And then we come to the kebab-house, where a hapless animal&#39;s leg seems to have barbequed for weeks after an unsuccessful hip-replacement operation. In rougher areas of Leeds and south London, the takeaways have a counter that&#39;s about five feet above the ground with the proprietor (presumably standing on a box) grinning nervously at you. This is presumably to avoid stickups and raids by health-inspectors. I&#39;ve never tried it but word has it that, if you attempt to pass a forged £50 note, the attendant hits a button which empties the deep-fat fryer on you. BTW, on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VLYpKGVBUg" rel="nofollow">Yorkshire Airlines</a>, the Air Dorises bring you mushy peas at your seat, even if you fly working class.Paul Danonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04816761952837296368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-76479341698136940342010-02-23T16:10:12.658+00:002010-02-23T16:10:12.658+00:00Esha - I was careful to specify that hot food was ...Esha - I was careful to specify that hot food was being eaten without cutlery in those long-lost days: we all eat take-away pizza with our fingers now!<br />But cake - now, it depends on who made it and where it is being eaten. A British home-made sponge cake will contain butter or margarine; the hard fat will give strength to the finished cake and allow it to be eaten in the hand. In a posh tearoom or when eating a &#39;gateau&#39; or other delicate confections on a plate, a fork is very useful, if not de rigeur. American sponge cakes tend to contain cooking oil I believe, which explains their soft texture and the need for a fork. Don&#39;t you love the way teenagers will use the paper cases round muffins or cupcakes as a hygienic way of holding them while eating?!<br /><br />We often think of France as a country where food is so well-respected that take-away shops would never be popular (well, that may have been so until recently) - but delicatessens there have always had a hot &#39;plat du jour&#39; which is effectively the same thing - a way of bringing cooked food home - but it&#39;s usually a choice of one or two different dishes every day rather than a menu.biochemistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-29337268027842321682010-02-22T05:03:37.753+00:002010-02-22T05:03:37.753+00:00@biochemist: Conversely, I (an American from Hawai...@biochemist: Conversely, I (an American from Hawaii, now living in London) see my British friends eat cakes with their fingers that I would expect to eat with a fork.<br /><br />My friends also use the term &quot;take-away&quot; to include phoning a take-away (non-sit-down) place for delivery - has anyone else noticed that?Eshanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-32975817141484690802010-02-22T01:06:48.696+00:002010-02-22T01:06:48.696+00:00There&#39;s something strangely satisfying about f...There&#39;s something strangely satisfying about fish and chips wrapped in old newspapers - down here in the South of England they seem to have abandoned old newspapers in favour of sanitized white paper but &#39;up north&#39; there are places they still use the newspapers. Is there an equivalent in the U.S. ?Investorhttp://www.onlinestocktradingforbeginners.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-71802536609284015532010-02-18T19:54:09.805+00:002010-02-18T19:54:09.805+00:00Good timing, I live on the south coast of the UK a...Good timing, I live on the south coast of the UK and recently started getting coffee from a cafe near work and noticed that while I (NorthernB rEng)always ask for &#39;a coffee to take out&#39; they consistently re-phrase it as &#39;take-away&#39; which I would only ever use for food I think, while &#39;carry out&#39;, as someone else mentioned, would be alcohol.HelenBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-38705448703575092392010-02-17T23:26:10.174+00:002010-02-17T23:26:10.174+00:00The Indian carry-out (as I would say) in my neighb...The Indian carry-out (as I would say) in my neighborhood in Chicago may be unique in the world- it&#39;s actually a combination Indian/Soul Food restaurant.<br /><br />http://www.allmenus.com/il/chicago/17460-rajun-cajun/menu/<br /><br />It&#39;s neither the best Indian or Soul Food I&#39;ve ever had, but on a cold day, a meal of Tandoori Chicken and Macaroni and Cheese is excellent comfort food.Machanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-7425597501265599792010-02-17T17:56:00.351+00:002010-02-17T17:56:00.351+00:00One type of food that is gaining ground in the US ...One type of food that is gaining ground in the US (faster than Indian I would say) is Middle Eastern Food...ie. Schwarma, Kebab, Saffron Rice.<br /><br />These places are often much more like a Carry out restaurant, with few to no chairs, whereas Indian (as mentioned before) is mostly more &quot;formal.&quot;billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-22126757444225405202010-02-17T17:53:22.606+00:002010-02-17T17:53:22.606+00:00&quot;But regrettably rare these days, as is the g...&quot;But regrettably rare these days, as is the glorious &quot;pokey hat&quot; for ice cream in a cone.&quot;<br /><br />A pokey hat from the &quot;tally (Italian) man&quot; eh?<br /><br />When I was a student in Sheffield in the late &#39;70s / early &#39;80s you would still occasionally see ice cream being sold from a <a href="http://www.businessonwheels.co.uk/bike_tradice.php" rel="nofollow">traditional tricycle</a> by the &quot;hokey-pokey man&quot; at the entrance to Weston Park.Joe1959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-59934086293509134072010-02-17T11:35:36.213+00:002010-02-17T11:35:36.213+00:00&quot;In England (and maybe the rest of the UK) ma...&quot;In England (and maybe the rest of the UK) many if not most Indian restaurants are run by Bengali people, primarily from Bangladesh&quot;<br /><br />It is the case in Edinburgh too that most &quot;Indian&quot; restaurants are run by Bangladeshis, but I think there are more Sikhs involved in the Indian restaurant trade through in Glasgow.<br /><br />Many, if not most, chip shops in Edinburgh are run by Italians. The largest sell an amazing array of carry out / take away / take out / food to go (I&#39;m so influenced by the scripted utterances of McDonalds and Starbucks staff that I&#39;m not sure what feels most natural to me now), including ice cream and pizzas (baked, or, for the natives, deep-fried), but also sometimes salads (shock horror: Scot eats vegetable!) and kebabs. As they are open sometimes into the wee hours, some of them also sell milk, tea bags, cigarettes, wine, beer and other items more usually associated with a convenience store.<br /><br />When I was growing up in the English Midlands (late &#39;60s - late &#39;70s), most chip shops were run by Greek Cypriots: those owned by my father (English) being an exception.Joe1959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-47843960976168271052010-02-17T03:50:42.738+00:002010-02-17T03:50:42.738+00:00I&#39;m from Ceredigion and never heard &#39;bechd...I&#39;m from Ceredigion and never heard &#39;bechdan&#39; either. Bechdan looks Welsh but is not listed in the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales Dictionary. Brechdan is a sandwich though so it could be a typo or related somehow. <br /><br />[The Welsh name for fish and chips is &quot;pysgod a sglodion&quot;, shortened in common parlance to &quot;&#39;sgod a &#39;sglod&quot;, as demonstrated in Welsh soap Pobol y Cwm.]Lisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12108790298190157853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-25384236396854122092010-02-16T18:32:14.701+00:002010-02-16T18:32:14.701+00:00I think the Sun is making the mistake of saying &q...I think the Sun is making the mistake of saying &quot;Wales&quot; when they mean only a part of it. I never heard the term &quot;bechdan&quot; during my 20 odd years of living in South Wales. The mention that it is also used by Scousers leads me to believe it&#39;s probably a North Wales term.<br /><br />I miss rissoles terribly. I lived in Northern England for 4 years and was shocked to discover they were different, and now I live int he US and can&#39;t get anything even remotely similar. Whenever I&#39;m back in Wales I make a point of buying a portion of Chips, a chicken pie, a jumbo sausage and a rissole. It&#39;s more than worth the feeling of being so full you can&#39;t move without exploding. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-12212811587672683142010-02-16T16:50:27.517+00:002010-02-16T16:50:27.517+00:00I&#39;m surprised that the professor quoted in the...I&#39;m surprised that the professor quoted in the Sun article thinks &quot;chip butty&quot; is a Southern expression. I&#39;ve hardly ever been into a Southern English chip shop, but &quot;butty&quot; for sandwich is definitely North-Western English.<br /><br />I was given a taste of natural yoghurt as a child in the early 60s and pulled a face! A decade later I spent a year in Switzerland and became addicted to the French-style &quot;set&quot; yoghurts, which were standard there and can be found here in the UK.<br /><br />Kate (Derby, UK)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-22363935128215344282010-02-16T14:43:08.098+00:002010-02-16T14:43:08.098+00:00To me (midwest AmE), take-out is only used as a ge...To me (midwest AmE), take-out is only used as a generic. For example, I would ask &quot;Do you want to get take-out?&quot; but if the answer was yes, I would ask &quot;What do you want to pick up?&quot; I would pick up Chinese, but I wouldn&#39;t get Chinese take-out. <br /><br />I have been asked &quot;take-out or eat in&quot;, but it is becoming &quot;Here or to-go&quot; more frequently.<br /><br />Sit-in definitely implies a non-violent protest of some kind, and I would wonder why a restaurant would want anyone to sit-in, but that might be because I now live in North Carolina (check out the Woolworth counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, if you need an example).Amanda P.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-4453983131947972292010-02-16T14:05:54.704+00:002010-02-16T14:05:54.704+00:00The discussion of pizza keeps reminding me of that...The discussion of pizza keeps reminding me of that scene in To Catch a Thief, in which Cary Grant offers his English guest some Quiche Lorraine, and the guest says, &quot;yes, I have heard of it&quot;.<br /><br />Is quiche as common in the US as it is in the UK (and has been for 40 years)?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-74864412237302911172010-02-16T13:57:10.908+00:002010-02-16T13:57:10.908+00:00@anonymous:
&quot;the expression &quot;a poke of c...@anonymous:<br />&quot;the expression &quot;a poke of chips, [please]&quot;... is quite common in Scotland&quot;<br /><br />But regrettably rare these days, as is the glorious &quot;pokey hat&quot; for ice cream in a cone.Cameron MacDonald Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11460898271918397890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-15285256735926555022010-02-16T13:44:58.143+00:002010-02-16T13:44:58.143+00:00A timely article on the role of chip shops in keep...A <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2854894/Chip-shops-help-dialects-survive.html" rel="nofollow">timely article</a> on the role of chip shops in keeping dialectal differences alive!lynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-23139408285546882522010-02-16T12:27:04.591+00:002010-02-16T12:27:04.591+00:00Really, @biochemist? I remember when yoghurt very...Really, @biochemist? I remember when yoghurt very first came in (I still spell it with an &quot;h&quot;), it was natural only; my mother, who liked it, would add a little Ribena to it. The over-sweet and rather nasty stuff came in later. Even now, I prefer natural yoghurt with a little flavouring - stewed fruit or even lemon curd - to the over-sweet shop stuff.Mrs Redboots (Annabel Smyth)http://www.blogger.com/profile/11270027663691257254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-24366940188777371632010-02-16T12:18:14.004+00:002010-02-16T12:18:14.004+00:00I expect Better Half ate his &#39;pizza pie&#39; w...I expect Better Half ate his &#39;pizza pie&#39; with a knife and fork in those far-off days - as indeed most Brits still do when presented with pizza on a plate. <br />In 1969 I met some Americans in our student group in Paris - their jaws dropped when the Brits ate pizza this way - I had never seen anyone eat hot food with their hands before - in the UK even fish and chips were supplied with a little wooden fork in case you ate it from the paper (the alternative was/is to take it home and put it on a warm plate, and use cutlery).<br /><br />And Ros&#39;s point about spelling exotic food names - I can remember the introduction of yoghourt, in astonishingly sweet formulations, to the UK - now it&#39;s yogurt and we eat it au naturel.biochemistnoreply@blogger.com